Re: [Gretl-devel] Request for Comments: gnuplot and foreign
On Fri, 10 Oct 2014, Sven Schreiber wrote:
> After all, if you really really want to do
> really really complex things, you'd probably want to export your data
> and start from scratch with something else. And besides, you can always
> use the --input switch.
Again, I agree in principle. OTOH I think many people (including me)
like the inline way of controlling everything from a single script file.
So it was good to be able to supply literal gnuplot commands inline
inside curly braces.
That's a matter of taste. If I had to produce some very complex output,
I'd rather write a function for producing the corresponding gnuplot
script, save it into a temporary location, and then invoke gnuplot with
the --input option. This can be done from a single script, without having
to issue a monster-like, 20-lines literal appenidx to the gnuplot command.
> So that would leave the stripped-dow version of the gnuplot
command and
> the new "plot" environment.
I'm now thinking, why actually stripping down the gnuplot command? This
would mean to scrap stuff which is working nicely, mostly. Of course the
way that the command is described in the docs could be adjusted in order
to encourage other usage. But stripping down the functionality would
seem to have no real benefit.
Well, for cleanliness, mostly; code maintainability etc.
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Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
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